Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2024 Launch, 7th Year!!!

original Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus Collage

by Doug Van Houten

Welcome ~

Astonishingly, we are now approaching the 7th year of Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus. The website has now been visited by thousands of people from over 70 countries around the Earth; people from Ukraine, Russia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, USA, Guatemala, Argentina, Australia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Lebanon, Ireland, and so many more. It occurs to me more and more that Earthsong is an experience and knowing that goes beyond, through particular cultural identities and political systems; that Earthsong is a way of how it is to remember our place in wider kinship with Earth. Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is a way of unity in diversity in the different notes; is recognised and expressed across species and other-than-human life too. Might raising the resonances of Earthsongs through Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus make further impact, aliveness, in these unravelling times.

Might it be possible to increase the current bandwidth of experience shifting the current mighty dissonance dying into a birthing of .... (?) Mystery knows? What may emerge from such a wave of song around the Earth together? More and more l feel a depth sense of Planetary Imagination that Geneen Marie Haugen articulates and names in her work; the more honed in we/l become to the voices of the Earth, the more intimacy, open, the more aliveness rings and waves out/in/is tune in a Cosmic song.

Reflecting on contributions in previous years and increasing interest/publications, it seems to me that Earthsongs are becoming much more widely accepted as ‘normal’ than even our launch in 2018. I’ve not offered time to an academic study on that point;), I'm more a mystic in these matters that scientists are catching up with; it’s far more a feeling seeing more new books arriving with that title. Maybe this Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus could add to a new book to a growing list as well. l believe, Earthsongs, has become more speakable, or maybe l should say, singable, of which Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is a contribution to in a bigger song. 

What might be the way you long to listen in and sing/play into the Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus wherever you are around and in Earth, or indeed, sing-in already?

I continue to experience Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus as more of a Ceremony than ‘the event’ it started as seven years ago. For me Ceremony adds a further deeper resonance which increases the impact from the ‘ordinary’, like going through a portal consciously into an imaginal world where anything is possible, where the impossible becomes possible.

Are your heart strings plucking into tune? Are you curious about the heart strings of/with/in the world? Why not linger a while with Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus and join in. Share this newsletter, prepare for a further variety of sumptuous Earthsongwave Conversations coming your way on this approach to 1 April. Remember there are many resources available on the website. You are welcome to send in/share your own. We look forward to hearing from you along the resonating musical staff lines threading their way together.

Meantime there is the link for the website and Facebook Page below where there will be regular posts on the approach to Monday, 1 April. On the Introduction page of the website you can click a link to an article about Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus in Unpsychology Magazine, 2019.

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Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus, Monday 1 April at dawn wherever you are around Earth. You are invited to sing into different kinds of webs in the Planetary Imagination, weave with life as if it really matters, it does ...

Please share with one person, then if they share with another….. the wave will grow. See the website link below for resources for this self organised ‘Feed the Earth’ Ceremony. There are also postings on the Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2023 Facebook Page. You can read many other beauty blogsongs from many singers, poets, artists and more on the Earthsongwave.com blog page link below.

Whilst Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is a self organised ceremony, you are also welcome to send in your ideas and experiences. We love to read/see/listen to them.

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Wendy is a Renaissance woman-creature, a wild soul guide and mentor, poet, writer, photographer, teacher. With a Cailleach’s Eye she sees, listens and speaks words and questions who are more like portals into further mysteries. She invites and sparks us deeper into the curiosity and wonder of being reshaped and sung rather than neat solutions and answers. She is a life-time agent of cultural evolution, devoted to Earth's Dreaming and human transformation as part of Earth Community. She has also founded Abbey Of Soul, where revelation is the way life guides us.

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Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus, Founded 2018

Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2023 Approaching ~ Wendy Robertson Fyfe

Indigo Bunting, Jamie K. Reaser (with thanks)

Dawn chorus sunrise

Songs l forgot how to hear

Try again, they say.

Kristopher Drummond

(with thanks)

I'm awake at 2 in the morning listening to a blackbird singing in the dead of a dark night. As you may know from previous blogsongs, l’m usually woken by him nearer to the dawning. But, here, now, at 2am he doesn’t stop singing all night. How can l not stay awake, attentive, listening with his lyrical tunes echoing around the ancient stone walls of Dunbar and inside my open heart. He stands, singing from the top of the telegraph pole which gives him the echoing sounding stage. It’s like he's singing a homage to an invisible God/Goddess, and maybe he too is feeling the return of the sun to the Northern Hemisphere. All night long, he just keeps singing on; all night, as if the very world’s breath depends on his song to continue.

When was the last time you felt that way, awake all night in praise and wonder as if your song and listening mattered that much for the world’s breath to continue?

I continue wondering what is so different about this particular night when he sings so exquisitely until after sunrise. Is he serenading his beauty lover who comes to my garden door for sultanas? Perhaps he's delighting with the forthcoming creative nesting and egg season. They have a nest here with many other birds including blue tits and great tits on the old wall covered in thick ivy at the end of my garden. Last year these two birds alone hatched five chicks throughout the summer months, and who, delightedly for me, also sang at my door.

I’ve not known him to sing through a night before. Other birds begin to join in. First the seagulls. They are very loud with their intelligent array of cries that l need to listen intently to find, yes, he is still singing out! Then the sparrow, wrens, and ring-necked doves sing into this now symphony.

An image arrives: invisible chord strands creating webs of the world being sung into being in a way life is born to sing; the blackbird knows.

Currently, chord strands are not being sung in and from our dominant human cultures to the Earth and Earth Community; songs that offer weavings out, into and from the webs of Earth. Perhaps ozone and other unholy holes are made when humans don’t join in the Earthsong, don't sing into and honour the invisible webs of being. Perhaps instead falling awake all night in sleepless stress and grief, feeling with Earth's body.

Nature-based indigenous cultures know this, of course; know the particular magic and enchantments needed in now weaving the forgotten imaginal fields of song and sound, the particular tunes that each one of us brings to sing. Perhaps our activism in these urgent times is needed as much in the intangible realms as the tangible; learning once more to connect with unsung songs.

So when was the last time you stayed awake or woken by an honour tending singing, with a feeling of something beyond you unseen and maybe just waiting on the edge of your awareness for you to move towards? What if this magnificent and holy Earth is depending on just that, on you listening, singing notes that only you can sing in all time into the webs of the world. Here's just the opportunity for you.

Sing on, you reverences …

Blackbird song in the early hours of late March 2023

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Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus, Saturday 1 April at dawn wherever you are around Earth. You are invited to sing into different kinds of webs, weave with life as if it really matters … listen … Earthsong ...

Please share with one person, then if they share with another….. the wave will grow. See the website link below for resources for this self organised ‘Feed the Earth’ Ceremony. There are also postings on the Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2023 Facebook Page. You can read many other beauty blogsongs from many singers, poets, artists and more on the Earthsongwave.com blog page link below.

Whilst Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is a self organised ceremony, you are also welcome to send in experiences. We love to read/see/listen to them.

Wend is a Renaissance woman-creature, a wild nature-based soul guide and mentor, poet, writer, photographer, teacher. With a Cailleach’s Eye she sees, listens and speaks words and questions who are more like portals into further mysteries. She invites and sparks us deeper into the curiosity and wonder of being reshaped and sung rather than neat solutions and answers. She is a life-time agent of cultural evolution, devoted to Earth's Dreaming and human transformation as part of Earth Community.

The Becoming of a Day ~ Jamie K. Reaser

We were spinning—all of us—on a tilt toward the east. On our way, we were met by ever-expanding rosy hues of light. Then, golds. Then, blues—vast blues. We were entranced by beauty. Awakened from our dispirited slumber. In awe. Birds sang—sang from every tree and bush. There were many then—many birds, many trees and, of course, bushes. The birds, they sang out testimonials—declarations. It was all about their beingness, their pleasures. They threw their heads way back and, beaks wide, to the sky they sang. It was something to behold by sight and by ear. You could feel it—how the world had become something across a mere span of moments that it had not been just moments before the light, the colors, and the chorus. We emerged from darkness, maybe desolation too. This, we decided, was the beginning. It was daigan—dawn—the becoming of a day. We agreed to count our lives out by such moments—by days. Imagine the boldness and joy in that decision! Tell me how many dawns you’ve had. Tell me what the colors were. Tell me which birds perched where and, then, tell me what they warbled or called or cried out. And, if you cannot, tell me of your sorrow. Tell me how you have forsaken the dawn songs. Tell me why you, in your animal body, decided to stop living.

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Dr. Jamie K. Reaser is a scientist, philosopher, award-winning writer, artist, and regenerative farmer. In all forms, Jamie’s work explores the inter-relatedness of Nature and human nature. Her newest release (with co-editor J. Drew Lanham) is Dawn Songs: A Birdwatcher's Field Guide to the Poetics of Migration (Talking Waters Press, 2023). Jamie is tended by the meandering Rockfish River and steadfast Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia.

Photographs copyright JKR.